


Through Glory’s Rise and Grace’s Fall

by aban_asaara



Series: Shadows at Noontide [8]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 12:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12387894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: Hawke stays in Kirkwall in the wake of the Chantry explosion, but soon realises she will be of more help by leaving the city altogether.At least she doesn’t have to be alone.





	Through Glory’s Rise and Grace’s Fall

Words never bothered her before.

Apostate. Refugee. Basra. Shem. Bitch—usually in combination with “Fereldan” or “dog lord,” as if that made it clever.

Words never bothered her—and she’s been called many—until Kirkwall snatches the title it bestowed upon her and spits it back in her face.

Thanks for nothing, _Champion_.

Void take you, _Champion_.

Shove your help, _Champion_.

Funny how that works. Save a bunch of plump nobles from the big bad oxmen and you get a title and a medal, but keep a towerful of mages from getting slaughtered by their gaolers for a crime they didn’t even commit, and Kirkwall retracts its favour at head-spinning speed.

It was home, once. The mages she frees aren’t stupid enough to stay, but she does—tries to put the city back together as she did her mother’s favoured tea plate as a girl, though her hands were always more suited to breaking things than mending them. Some glue and a bit of magic made the plate serviceable again, but all she could ever see thereafter were the cracks, the split second when the porcelain slipped out of her fingers to shatter at her feet. All she sees now is the red hue of the blast, seared in shades of blue on the inside of her eyelids.

Never again will Kirkwall be the same. Never will it be more than the collection of its scars, a grim reminder of her failure, a pretty plate lost to a girl’s carelessness. At once she knew it, standing there with her heart about to fall out of her chest: the same terrible certainty that dawned on her when the darkspawn horde rose on the horizon of Lothering like a black sun, the sort of soul-rending moment that one ought to suffer only once in a lifetime, if at all.

Her second home, lost—and the second home she lost, too.

Ash and tears now rain down upon what’s left of it, and with it all, a question, a reproach, uttered as the hundred-voiced scream that swirls in the smoke-thick air: _how could she be so blind?_ Her help is welcome at first, even her spells when debris or flames get in the way. Survivors stumble past her, calling out for a mother or for a child, eyes wide and haggard amidst smears of soot and blood. When Hawke catches her reflection on a shard of stained glass, she’s shocked to see the same expression on her face. Only Fenris’s eyes are opaque, even as he grants a quick end to those whose wounds are beyond healing. He’s seen the worst of humanity already, after all—what’s one more atrocity?

At first she catches herself wishing Anders was there to help—then she wishes he was there to see— _and hear and smell_ —what he’s done: the bent bodies amidst the ruins of the Chantry, the sobs breaking the ash-soft silence like glass, the air heavy with the coppery scent of blood and fire and magic gone wrong.

But Anders is gone, Dumar assassinated, Elthina murdered, Orsino fallen to demons, Meredith consumed by red lyrium. How quickly Kirkwall turns its back on its erstwhile Champion once the ash has fallen, layered thick as Ferelden snows.

Seven years of holding it together, gone up in flames.

Most of her so-called friends make themselves scarce when the words “Exalted March” start being uttered—always in undertones, like a curse. Seneschal Bran makes no secret that he would cooperate with the Divine’s forces should it come to that. Cullen said the same, though he’s kept his Templars leashed for now. The Comte de Launcet hasn’t forgotten what Hawke did for his son, but he hasn’t forgotten either that her mother broke off their betrothal to elope with an apostate. Lady Harimann is not unsympathetic, but does not dare compromise her oath of fealty to Sebastian. Ser Marlein is just one noble, the tempered steel of her sword and resolve hardly enough to face the brunt of the Chantry forces. Some of the alienage elves would fight for Hawke in return, hers the lone voice in the Keep that defended them, but how much more should they suffer for the deeds of humans? And for all their good intentions, the City Guard can hardly afford the cost of siding with her. “Don’t do this to me, Hawke,” says Aveline. “You should leave.”

You should leave, says Ser Marlein.

You should leave, says her uncle.

You should leave, says Varric.

“We should leave,” Fenris says, and only then the words become real.

He shares her bed now: a crumbled statue of Andraste now sits on what’s left of his own bed, a new hole torn into his roof, while her estate alone stood untouched among the rubble, spared Maker knows how (“not enchantment,” Sandal explains, whatever that means). It’s been four nights since the Circle rebelled—endless stretches of dark spent making love to remember that they yet live until dawn rises pale and gray. And when everything she touches withers and dies, should she be so surprised that even her love is twisted into necessity, just a way to survive the night because when she closes her eyes, demons are there pressed up against the Veil, stretched to its bare wefts?

She longed for the day Fenris would share her home, but Maker help her, _never like this_.

Her grandfather’s signet ring is heavy between her fingers, large enough to fit loosely around her thumb. Her eyelids threaten to close even as she drips wax to seal letters of introduction for Orana, then for Bodahn, should anyone—Maker forbid—want to hire the fallen Champion’s household staff. She scribbles down Lady Phyllis Reinhardt’s name and address for Orana to inquire. She slips the deeds to the estate into an envelope addressed to Charade. _Maybe your friends can make use of it and keep the looters and thugs off everyone’s backs_ , she writes, then sighs. Gamlen will kill her.

And Fenris … Anything bearing her name or her crest, or the cursed wraith of her touch will only make things worse for him. He’s grown fond of the life he’s built in Kirkwall, if not of the city itself, and she’s ruined it. The Chantry will hound her lover before anyone else.

It’s still night by the time she rises to her feet, Maker’s Bark on her heels, but Fenris is standing in the doorway of the study. His eyes are a palpable weight, heavier than the ring in the palm of her hand. “Can you give these to Bodhan when he wakes?” she asks, handing him the pack of letters.

He only takes them to drop them back on the desk. “Hawke,” he says, a question, an admonition, a promise, and a thousand other things that she can’t afford to think about. _Don’t make me say it_. Her fingers curl around the polished silver ring, still warm from the melted wax; she presses her knuckles to her mouth for a moment and finds it smells like blood.

Fenris untwists the ring from her grip. It clicks on the smooth wooden surface of the desk, glinting with flickering candlelight. “I go where you go.”

Of course he knows, even without her saying it. Heat rushes to her face, and she has to look away, scrambling for her every last tatter of strength. Weaving wisp-thin threads of magic into a spell while dangling from the point of the Arishok’s sword wasn’t half as hard as jerking away from Fenris now. “Not this time,” she says, turning away from him to face the hearth instead. “I’m turning myself in to the Seekers.”

His breath hitches behind her. _Glad to know I’m not completely predictable_ , she thinks, then bites down the awful, bitter laugh that rises to her mouth like bile. How many years did she wait for him, only to push him away in the end?

“ _No_ ,” he says, and it sinks into the pit of her stomach like a blade. Even as he stands behind her she sees him all the same, all green eyes and grim determination.

“Oh? Do you have a better idea?”

“We leave,” he starts, clamping one hand around her arm so that she has to face him, “ _together_ , as we should have from the start.”

“And then what? The Divine’s forces are coming any day now to tear Kirkwall apart to root out the rebels, starting with me.”

“And you think that will stop them? It will not end with you. They _will_ make an example of you, and I _can’t_ —” His eyes flit to her forehead and she knows what he’s thinking—and that’s if she’s lucky enough not to be pilloried and executed on the steps of the Grand Cathedral in Val-Royeaux. “I won’t allow it.”

“The people of this city have suffered enough because of me,” she says, the cords of her neck straining to keep her voice steady. “I can’t just run away.”

Fenris pulls her to himself, and the words are warm on her brow as he speaks them. “Abandon this foolish notion. You’ve given more of yourself to this city than it deserves, and it would throw you to the wolves in return. Let Kirkwall fend for itself if that’s what it wants.”

The strength whooshes out of her all at once when she tries to move away from him again. Instead she sits down hard on the rug spread before the hearth; Fenris moves down with her to gather her in his arms like the pieces of a broken vase, while her hound curls up against her.

“And you?” she says against his chest. “You’ll never be free again if I don’t do this. You fought for your freedom every inch of the way, you shouldn’t have to throw it to the winds because of my mistakes.”

“And freedom implies that I get a say in the matter.”

 _That’s that, then. Might have an easier time talking Meredith into leaving the Gallows than getting Fenris to change his mind._ Defeated, Hawke heaves a sigh as she lets herself fall back onto the rug. The gilt edges of the coffered panels of the ceiling glimmer in the firelight; too bad she’s never noticed until now.

His silhouette blots out the firelight as he leans above her. Even without seeing them she knows the planes and angles of his face, the high curve of his cheek, the dark brows over eyes capable of the sharpest glares and softest gazes. She knows the shape of his lips and the taste of them even before he bends down to kiss her. “I go where you go,” he repeats against her mouth, silken strands of hair tickling her face.

It hurts, somehow, makes it just a little bit harder to breathe. His every touch brushes the tenderest place of her heart where her entire being coalesces, tied into a too-tight knot where sorrow and hope are so tangled up as to be indistinguishable. And isn’t it odd that the hand that has held still-beating hearts in its grip should keep hers together when it should long have been broken? Yet he’s carried her through the worst of those years and kept her safe until the very end, even when it meant fighting for the freedom of the very people who took his.

 _I can’t bear the thought of living without you_. When the city was crumbling down around them, sure, but now that the dust and ash have settled? She didn’t expect to find him there still, stretching his hand out to her.

“We run, then?” she manages past the strain in her throat.

“I’m quite experienced in the matter, luckily.”

Something wells up inside her chest like a scream, but there’s naught she can do except smile past it. “And I promise that wherever we end up next, I’ll try my best not to start a rebellion, an Exalted March, and a war with Starkhaven.”

“All the more reason for me to stay with you. You call to trouble like an Archdemon to the darkspawn.” He lies down next to her on the rug, propping himself up on his elbow and resting his temple on his fist. “Where would you have us go?”

“Seheron? You said you wanted to go back, didn’t you?”

Fenris laughs under his breath. “After years in Hightown? I daresay you wouldn’t fare so well in the jungle.”

“Hey, I used to live in Lowtown. Wiping with leaves is probably a luxury compared to that.”

One corner of his mouth quirks upwards. “Not when the vegetation is actively trying to kill you.”

“Alright, maybe not Seheron, then,” she replies with a wince. He reaches to brush a strand of hair off her brow, his mouth still hooked into a lopsided smile; she curls her fingers around his wrist to keep his hand to her cheek. “Say, how would you pick where to head next when you were running away from Danarius?”

His gaze slides to the hearth. “It wasn’t much of a decision most of the time. Wherever seemed least likely for his hunters to find me. Mostly I followed the Imperial Highway from a distance, and found myself in Kirkwall when I had enough. Serendipitous, to say the least,” he adds in an undertone, brushing her cheek with his thumb.

Hawke leans into his touch, closing her eyes. “It’s stupid, but you know where I would go back to if I could? The farm near Amaranthine, where I was born.”

“Nothing is stopping us. I did think you would want to return to Ferelden.”

Her mabari barks in assent, tail wagging. “Well, _someone_ would like to go back,” she says, scratching Maker’s Bark behind the ears. “You’d hate it, though. It’s cold and damp, even in summer, and foreigners always insist it smells like wet dog.”

He looks at her. “I’ve gotten used to the smell,” he replies, then laughs under his breath as he catches the fist she aims at his shoulder.

For an instant she indulges herself in fantasy, however fleeting: Fenris and she returning to the land of her birth, much like her parents did years before. Even after all these years she can see the barley fields rippling gold like the hair of ladies in Orlesian ballads, smell the crisp, sprightly scent of tomato leaves and apples reddened by the Harvestmere sun, hear the whinny of horses and the jangle of bellwethers …

And yet that place only exists in her memories now.

Flames flicker and twist in the hearth, the heat just shy of being uncomfortable as it pulses against her face. “The farmlands around Amaranthine were hit hard by the Blight, I heard, and Lothering never recovered. Not that it’d be the same, anyway. I just miss how … uncomplicated everything was back then, you know?” she says, wincing at her own words. “No, you don’t. Sorry.”

“Tell me about it, then.”

She takes a breath. “Just—being up to no good with the twins, swimming in the stream behind the house, playing hide-and-seek in old Stark’s barn, stealing apples from the orchard …  It’s amazing what we got away with, in hindsight. Father almost always took our side. ‘They’re just kids, Leandra. They’re not hurting anyone.’

“The only time I remember Father getting really angry with us was when he caught us playing mages and templars. Maker, but was he scary when he was mad. Carver cried,” she chuckles. “I didn’t understand why it made him so angry until after I came into my magic and forced us to move the first time. Things were never as simple after that.”

Fenris watches her for a moment, then wets his lips with the tip of his tongue. “How did your magic manifest itself?”

Her mouth twitches into a smile at the memory. “I wanted the reddest, highest apple in a tree, so I climbed all the way to the top, lost my footing and … floated to the ground. Landed without a scratch. All was well until Carver tried to do the same and dislocated his arm at the elbow.”

The laughter dies in her throat; she tries to smile the claw-sharp stab of grief away, but it’s a fragile, brittle thing, and it crumbles away like the dry autumn leaves crunching underfoot in Lothering. Fenris tenses when she clasps both hands over her face, one bare foot brushing her ankle as he leans over her. Maker’s Bark rests his head on her stomach and nuzzles the crook of her arm.

She draws in a stuttering breath. “Maker, what blasted idiot survives Ostagar and Lothering only to die in some expedition? And Bethy—you would’ve liked her, Fen. She wasn’t anything like me. She was kind, and pretty, and reasonable, _and she didn’t deserve to die like that_.”

Hawke presses one hand to her mouth to swallow back the sob chasing the words out of her aching throat. Andraste help her, she misses them _so much_. Bethany, sweet Bethany, lips stained with berries and the scent of lavender all about her, always lost in the tale of some prince or chevalier, and afraid, so afraid of what she was, slipping under the covers at night to hold her big sister’s hand when the nightmares were bad, a tumble of fragrant hair on her pillow and down a pretty, delicate neck that snapped like a twig under an ogre’s hand. Carver, a gigantic prick if she ever knew one, picking up fights like Bethany would wildflowers, strutting like a cock before girls he found pretty, always dragging Hawke down into some squabble yet defending her when it mattered, only looking for himself—and would he have if she didn’t have to slice his throat open to spare him the worst of the Blight sickness?

Mother, always with rouge on her cheeks and pleats in her hair, even just to go to the farmers’ market, waiting for her on the threshold with her fists on her hips whenever she dawdled on the way home, mending garments by the hearth and stitching little birds on inner cuffs to make her children smile, then cut up like cloth herself and sewn onto another woman’s body. And Father, shoulders broad as a barn and an even broader smile, crinkles at the corner of his eyes and laugh lines downturned when she first told him of the dreams, making applesauce to guide her through her first force spells, still calling her his little girl even when she wasn’t anymore, even when he made her promise to look after her family, the night the consumption took him.

She didn’t even cry then, she remembers. She needed to be strong for the twins because Mother wasn’t, and then there was no time to grieve while being pursued by the Darkspawn out of Lothering, and the others didn’t need a blubbering mess lumbering along on their way out of the Deep Roads, and her pride didn’t allow it when Gamlen cursed her magic and clamored for all mages to be locked up and she with them and _why couldn’t you just be normal, girl?_

And in Fenris’s arms, in the split seconds between heartbeats when it hurt so much she felt numb, she could almost pretend he never left if only she held back the tears.

It doesn’t hurt any less when he gathers her in his arms this time, but she’s—not _happy_ because she isn’t, but he’s hers and it’s more than she’s had in years. Perhaps in time they can figure happiness out, piece it together as runes into words, weave it out of little things just as the grandest epics are all written from the same few shapes. And it’s that thought, that one wisp of hope that comes to rest inside her heart when there’s no space left for anything but hurt, and makes it burst like a storm cloud in summer. After years the tears come, a trickle at first, then a flood, and at last she surrenders, sinking into his embrace before her sorrow drowns her instead.

And Fenris—who once ran, who once thought himself unworthy of anything but her hatred— _Fenris_ weathers the storm and keeps her afloat, holds her close with nary a word nor even a whisper in her ear. Just the warmth of his breath in her hair, the slow rise and fall of his chest under her own, his heart beating against hers—the same hearts that have beaten on Seheron and in Ferelden, in the meadows of Lothering and the streets of Minrathous, across the Waking and Nocen Seas, through the Silent Plains and the Coastlands, towards the looming Twins of Kirkwall and down the steps of an alienage at night, through freedom both lost and won, through glory’s rise and grace’s fall and bloodshed and death and death and _death_ , until all that is left to keep them apart is flesh and bone and a few layers of brushed linen and silk.

Just that, and yet it’s everything.

“You’re all I have left,” she manages into the crook of his shoulder, voice strained to the high pitch of a girl’s, “and that—that _scares_ me.”

His hold tightens around her. “And nothing will keep me from you this time.”

“It’s not that,” she breathes in answer.

Slowly, she pulls herself up to straddle him; her hound curls up at her knee while she tries to smooth the wrinkles her grip left on the fabric of Fenris’s tunic. He watches her for a time, hair haloed silver-gold around his head on the hand-knotted Rivaini rug, then covers her hands with his own. “Hawke?”

It’s a long time before she trusts her voice again. “I thought that if my father never faltered, then I never would,” she starts, her gaze fixed on the patch of tears above his collarbone, “but what if I’m always one threat away from blood magic? What if one day it’s the only way I have to keep you safe?”

His chest heaves under her hands. He curls one finger under her chin and tilts her head up so that she looks at him, his green eyes turned hazel in the swaths of firelight. Would she rather not look in those eyes again because he’s dead or because she’s lost herself to protect him?

“Your father was a good man forced down a dark path,” he says after a moment, “but I would not have you walk the same. Especially not on my behalf.”

“Even if it means letting you die?”

“ _If_ one day it ever came to this—then yes.”

“It might kill me too.”

“It will not.”

A tear rolls down her face even as she tries to swallow them back. “I need you, Fenris.”

“You do not.” His fingertip traces the curve of her cheekbone, wipes away the searing burn at the edge of her lashes. “Perhaps you just now realise that you’re fallible. That is not a bad thing.”

 _Few things in this world are stronger than a promise kept_ , Marethari once said, but this promise Hawke can only keep until she _can’t_ , and if Marethari spoke the truth, then why does it feel like so little might break it? “I pray I never have to find out whether I’m as strong as you make me out to be, then.”

He tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I know it,” he starts, pulling himself up, “but that doesn’t mean we should test fate and tarry. Get some rest. I’ll let Isabela know she can expect us before noon.”

She sits up to a moist mabari tongue lapping the tears off her face. She laughs, unexpectedly, shielding herself with an arm before drying her face with her sleeve. Crying an Amaranthine Ocean’s worth of tears onto poor Fenris at least left her feeling lighter, despite the pounding in her head. “You know, I feel like boarding a ship with Bela isn’t the right way to go about the whole ’staying out of trouble’ thing. Twenty silvers says this ends with the theft of another priceless relic.”

Fenris gives a shrug, then takes her hands and helps her to her feet. “I suppose any old fishing boat would do, but I figured you’d rather play raiders.”

She returns the smile. Yes, a ship—and not the hold this time—the thrill of something new in the offing, the open sea, places where no one knows her face: Wycome, Llomerryn, Rialto. “You know me. If it involves peglegs and too much rum, I’m up for it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been sitting on this one since May, and have since really come to regret killing Carver off in what’s supposedly my canon. But ultimately the rest of the series is so focused on FenHawke that it doesn’t change much in the grand scheme of things, and I felt I couldn’t change this piece without really diminishing it, so … I’m sorry, Carver, I promise you will get to live in fics that aren’t strictly set in this universe. ♥
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think!


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